


Shower of Sparks

by greygryph



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bodhi is dealing with some shit, Cassian thinks it's cute, Everyone Needs A Hug, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, Force Ghosts, Force-Sensitive Jyn Erso, Gen, Jyn is protective of her people, Rebelcaptain - Freeform, Rogue one team - Freeform, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, Tagging as I go, a terrified and anxious boss, and is a tiny ball of rage and murder, and lots of medical attention, and still saving the day, but mostly hugs, like a boss, space dads looking out for their adopted kids
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-25
Updated: 2017-02-19
Packaged: 2018-09-19 20:20:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9458924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greygryph/pseuds/greygryph
Summary: Pain.That was the first thing Bodhi registered.Everything hurt.And then he took a breath and realized he’d been wrong before.Now everything hurt.The defected pilot was surprisingly alright with that. It meant he was still alive.In which Bodhi escapes the grenade blast and one life is all it takes to spark changes the galaxy over and give the remaining members of Rogue One a chance to see all that they accomplished on Scarif.





	1. Renegades

**Author's Note:**

> This movie has taken over my life in big way and when ideas started to pop up I couldn't tell them "no".
> 
> Title taken from Happiness by The Fray and pieces inspired by the novelization by Alexander Freed.

 

_Long live the pioneers_   
_Rebels and mutineers_   
_Go forth and have no fear_   
_Come close the end is near_

_-'Renegades' by the X Ambassadors_

 

* * *

 

 

Pain.

  
That was the first thing Bodhi registered.

  
Everything hurt.

  
And then he took a breath and realized he’d been wrong before.

  
_Now_ everything hurt.

  
The defected pilot was surprisingly alright with that. It meant he was still alive.

  
He huffed out a hysterical laugh that sounded more like a choke than anything else. Despite everything that had happened over the past few days. Despite the best efforts of the of the Empire, the Death Star, and, most recently, the grenade lobbed by one of Scarif’s Stormtroopers he was still alive.

  
Bodhi opened his eyes and stared over at the smoking ruin that had once been Rogue One. He may be alive after a desperate lunge out of the cargo hold, but the stolen Imperial Shuttle that had brought them here would go no further, and it surprised the pilot how much that hurt.

  
He rolled onto his side and stared over the destruction and bodies littering the landing platform, rebels and imperial alike. His mind shuddered for a moment and for a heartbeat he was lost in the chaotic fog that had followed him from Jedha and his time at the mercy of Saw Gerrera’s paranoia. Faces from the past joined the dead scattered around the pad before his sharp intake of breath at the sight sent a stab of pain through him and grounded him back in the present.

  
Bodhi clung to that pain, clenching a fist and dragging the present back into focus.

  
But he was still alive, and of he was than maybe someone else was too.

  
That meant they needed a way out.

  
They needed him.

  
And he needed the find them a ride off of the planet.

  
Bodhi grit his teeth against the pain and stood.

 

* * *

 

Jyn stared down the transmission platform defiantly at the man in white. Her own personal demon summoned from the depths of her nightmares to destroy every aspect of the life she’d just started to realize.

  
Mother dead by his order, Jedha razed and Saw killed to test the weapon he forced her father to build, Cassian—

  
The image of the Rebel Captain sprawled and still on the grating in the data tower made her heart clench painfully.

  
Her expression didn’t falter — she had too many years of practice to let her mask crumble now — and her eyes remained locked, defiant and proud, on his frustrated scowl.

  
“Who are you?” He demanded, uncertainty and fear tinging his voice and narrowing his gaze at her as if he was trying to place her face.

  
Jyn supposed he would know her even without having met her since she was a child. She had her father’s eyes and currently wore her mother’s expression when she’d confronted him at their homestead on Lah’mu.

  
“You know who I am.” Jyn challenged him, pride in her parents swelling in a way she’d never felt before.

  
They’d both felt like this before, she knew it. Like the death they stared down wasn’t any more intimidating than a Loper. Like every fiber of her body stood ready to defy death.

  
_No more._ Her soul sang. _You’ve chased me across the galaxy and haunted my nightmares and destroyed my family and killed Cassian, but no further. You will not take anything else from me,_ I won’t let you.

  
“I’m Jyn Erso.” She told him, standing tall. “Daughter of Galen and Lyra.”

  
_I’m the child you missed._ Her soul sang to the world, and the kyber crystal around her neck seemed to grow warm.

  
The man in white’s arm straightened, blaster tip still pointed at her collar but Jyn was not done yet.

  
“You’ve lost.”

  
His face morphed into a disbelieving sneer, “Oh, I have have I?”

  
Jyn’s expression turned amused, “My father’s revenge,” she twitched her head towards the transmission dish towering above them “He built a flaw in the Death Star.”

  
Her smirk returned at the slightest widening of his eyes and she pressed on.

  
“He put a fuse in the middle of your machine and I’ve just told the entire galaxy how to light it.”

  
The man’s face morphed into one of rage and he snarled out denials, argued about the shield protecting the planet and then stilled, re-centering the aim of his blaster.

  
Jyn took in a deep breath, and hushing the part of her screaming denials that this spineless nightmare of hers would be the one to finally end her life when the final steps of her goal were in sight as the rest of her made piece with it.

  
She was so tired and had so many people waiting for her there. So many little things that her soul missed, that the peace promised in death seemed like a blessing.

  
Her mother’s tight hugs and amused smiles. Saw’s watchful eyes and utter belief in her abilities. Her father’s earnest kindness and determination.

  
Her mind flashed to a still form at the bottom of a data tower once more and she hoped that she’d meet Cassian again in whatever happened after death.

  
But she refused to give this coward the satisfaction of seeing her fail and had a vibroblade tucked up her sleeve. If she moved fast enough she could turn his kill shot into a wounding one and buy the few moment she needed to reach him and ensure that, at the very least, he would die there with her.

  
Her flecked eyes stared defiantly at the man in white and his blaster, readying herself for one last fight.

  
The sound of the blaster made her twitch, and her body failed to move forward with her desperate plan.

  
But pain didn’t follow and it was the man in white and not her who crumbled to the ground.  
Jyn’s eyes darted up to the source and found a miracle.

  
Cassian leaned heavily on a support column, bruised and bloody but _alive_ and Jyn’s heart sang.

  
She wanted to race to him, to touch him and confirm that he was real and there, but she staggered the console first.

  
This was her legacy. Her father’s achievement and his shame all wrapped into one. She needed to get the plans off the planet.

  
The transmission process seemed too easy after all that they’d gone through to get to that point.

  
Jyn’s eyes tracked the bar depicting the progress of the transmission as it hit fifty percent, then continued to climb for a few more tense heartbeats before it finished.

  
Weight fell off her shoulders and she sagged in relief, turned her gaze back to Cassian, grinning triumphantly.

  
They staggered towards each other and both reached out at the same time, grasping at each other. Both of them needed the assurance that the other was there, was alive.

  
They’d done it, the impossible task.

  
Fluttering cloth caught her attention in the corner of her eye and fury blazed once more.

  
The man in white wasn’t moving, no, but he could still live. The living nightmare that had dogged her steps all her life could still be alive. The thought of her enemy, wounded but still alive, still a threat to her and to the completion of her father’s plan. Still a threat to the rebellion. Still a threat to _Cassian_ , had her moving towards him before she could make a conscious decision.

  
Calloused hands held her back and a voice whispered half into her hair halted her instinct to shake off the hands.

 

“No, leave it.” Cassian told her and tugged her away.

  
Jyn’s jaw clenched but she let herself be led away, pushing back that feral instinct in favor of helping the man who’d come back for her to the turbolift.

  
That thought made her heart swell and stomach twist at the same time.

  
He’d come back.

  
Not just now, but before as well. After she’d stopped being crucial for his mission and started being a hindrance.

  
She’d been completely honest when she told him that she wasn’t used to people sticking around when things went bad.

  
“Welcome home.” He’d told her and she knew she was.

  
That _he_ was.

 

* * *

 

The ride down from the transmission deck was filled with an exhausted and satisfied silence that Cassian had no desire to break.

  
He knew it was a miracle he was even standing right then after the blaster hit and the fall — let alone after climbing the data tower to reach Jyn.

  
But he hadn’t even considered any other course of action when he’d woken up. Jyn was vanishing through the upper vents and he knew that the man in white was in pursuit.

  
He knew she could more than take care of herself — watching her take out the squad of Stormtroopers on Jedha had proven that to him — but he couldn’t live with the potential that this was the one time she wasn’t.

  
She could be in trouble, their whole mission could be in trouble, and so he forced himself up, mind drifting in and out of awareness as his body followed Kay’s last command.

  
_“Climb!”_

  
By the time he emerged into the tropical air outside of the data tower, his breaths were coming in painful stabs and the world was greying in and out dangerously.

  
He swayed as he stood and staggered against one of the support columns, trying to slow his breathing and force the world back into focus.

  
Then voices.

  
One, male and unfamiliar, demanding and angry and the other…

  
_Jyn_.

  
Fierce defiance, daring the whole of the world to take her on.

  
Cassian moved, staggering the the next column in time to see the man in white holding Jyn at blaster point.

  
And Jyn stood firm and ready, unarmed and still fearless. Staring down her death, she _blazed_ , and not for the first time a small part of him wondered if she was actually a star bound in human form.

  
Without a conscious thought on his part he raised his blaster and fired, aim as steady despite the tremors of exhaustion wracking the rest of him.

  
The man in white crumpled and Jyn’s star filled gaze turned to him in amazement.

  
Then she smiled and Cassian felt a knot of something loosen in his stomach.

  
The plans were sent and then Jyn was there, reaching out for him as he reached for her, trying to reassure himself that she was still there, that he hadn’t been too late, that all of this was real.

  
He curled his fingers around her arm, around her waist and tugged her close. She was warm and solid and frantically grasping at his wrist and clinging to it like a lifeline.

  
Then she caught sight of the man in white, the man she’d apparently known beyond yet another Imperial enemy if their confrontation was anything to go off of. She stiffened in his grip and seemed to coil for a lunge.

  
Cassian pulled her back. Pulled her close and managed to murmur, “No, leave it” into her hair.

 

For a heartbeat he wondered if that would even work.

  
She’d never allowed herself to be held back by anything before. Jyn was a force of nature as she surged forward towards her goal, gathering people behind her like planets being drawn in by a sun.

  
Chirrut, Baze, Bodhi and himself had been pulled into her orbit without conscious thought on any of their parts. It felt so natural to do so, like they had finally found their place in the galaxy. The other Rebels he’d recruited it had felt the pull too, he’d seen it in their eyes as they prepped for their landing. She may haven’t been particularly good at speaking with or interacting with people, but she had an unpolished sort of charisma to her, and above all else she’d _believed_.

  
Maybe not in the official purpose of the Alliance. Especially not at the beginning when she’d been hurt and suspicious of the hands extended towards her.

  
Even at her most distrustful she’d embodied the Rebellion in a way nobody ever had in his eyes before. She refused to be cowed, refused to stop fighting, refused to back down from anything. She’d been the living, breathing embodiment of the stubborn determination that said _“I refuse to take another step, to be anything but what I am.”_

  
It was the determination that made you stop wondering if something was even possible and simply went ahead and did it.

  
“Do you think anyone’s listening?” He asked her as they staggered towards the lift, already knowing that the chances of them leaving Scariff were dwindling by the second.

  
“I know they are.” She said, fierce and sure. Suddenly Cassian was as well.

  
They’d done it.

  
And now he stood, swaying in the lift as it descended towards the surface below, marveling at the accomplishment and unable to tear his eyes away from Jyn’s flecked gaze.

  
Neither had completely let go of the other, Jyn’s hand on his wrist — finger on his pulse, he realized — and his own on her arm, grounding himself with the contact.

  
Memorizing her face and her eyes, only inches from his own, gave him something to focus on to keep the fuzzy edges of his vision at bay.

  
He wanted to be able to remember this moment forever. The elation of their success and the presence of someone who seemed to soothe his soul’s aches. He memorized the ghostly smile, the freckles brushed across her face, the fierceness of her gaze. He didn’t care how long his forever was, this moment would carry him through to it.

  
All too soon, it seemed, the lift shuddered to a halt and the door opened to daylight once more.

  
Tropical sunshine blazed down at them and they staggered out of the doors and into eerie silence.

  
The blaster fire and screaming engines of the battle had faded until it was just the whisper of distant waves to greet them, along with the sight of a new moon on the horizon.

  
The Death Star had come.


	2. Iridescent

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rogue One needed an escape plan. He was their escape plan. He was the pilot and so he needed to find a ship.

  

_When you were standing in the wake of devastation_  
_When you were waiting on the edge of the unknown_  
_And with the cataclysm raining down, insides crying save me now_  
_You were there impossibly alone._

 

_Do you feel cold and lost in desperation_  
_You build up hope but failure's all you've known_  
_Remember all the sadness and frustration_  
_And let it go, let it go._

  _-'Iridescent' by Linkin Park_

   

* * *

 

Bodhi staggered through the underbrush, searching for another usable ship to get them off world, heart throbbing painfully as he found every other landing pad between pad 9 and the Citadel deserted or destroyed.

  
He kept moving though, refusing to give up and remembering Jyn’s words as they taxied to their landing pad an eternity of minutes ago.

  
He couldn’t help but listen in as his body went on auto pilot to bring the ship towards the designated landing pad, just as he had countless times before.

  
“We’ll take the next chance.” She was saying determination making her words ring clear. “And the next. Until we win, or all our chances are spent.”

  
Bodhi still had chances, he wasn’t done yet.

  
He wasn’t even entirely sure what was driving him forward anymore. Was it to make up for years of doing nothing in the face of evil? Was it for Galen, who gave him a chance to redeem himself? Was it for Jedha and the faces and streets he would never see again? Was it for the Rebellion who seemed like the only keepers of the light in a world of shadow?

  
Perhaps it was a bit of all of those put together, but he was pretty sure it was for those core members of Rogue One who’d escaped Jedha and Eadu together. For the steady, grounding presence of Cassian. The rocketing pull of Jyn to move forward and act. The quiet, familiar prayers Chirrut had murmured in still moments. The subtle shifting of Baze putting himself between Bodhi and unfriendly gazes turned on his tattered uniform. Even the quiet complements uttered by Kay-tu.

  
Somehow, within the span of a few days they’d all found themselves unexpectedly tethered to each other.

  
Somehow, on the heels of loosing what had remained of his family in Jedha he’d found another and he wasn’t about to give up on them now.

  
So Bodhi stumbled gracelessly towards the main compound, expecting to stumble into Imperial forces beyond every tree and clump of tropical plants.

  
He never did, but every foot of uncontested progress made him coil tighter in preparation for what seemed like his inevitable discovery.

  
His mind flashed to the “examples” he’d seen. Deserters caught and executed. Supposed spies that had been tortured and then put on display as a warning. Fear was what kept so many of them in line.

  
Bodhi had lived with that fear for so long, with the familiar hum of adrenaline burning through his veins, it had become like white noise to him.

  
So despite the tension, despite the fear, he kept moving.

  
With every step, his mind continued to wander aimlessly while his eyes searched. Bodhi was familiar enough with that sort of distant, rambling course it took, the way thoughts kept trailing off and jumping around to recognize it as a concussion.

  
Not an ideal situation for him to be in, but he was _alive_. He would just have to deal with the hand he’d been dealt.

  
Rogue One needed an escape plan. _He_ was their escape plan. He was the pilot and so he needed to find a ship.

  
Something tugged at his attention and his wide eyes snapped up to the elevated VIP pad and the angular silhouette perched there.

  
Bodhi hesitated.

  
The ship should be under guard. _All_ ships should be under guard, obviously important ships most of all.

  
He wavered, licking his lips and considering the sounds of distant chaos.

  
There was a full on battle raging across the islets and peninsulas. The citadel’s guards could all be busy dealing with that.

  
The idea tasted of hope and he stared up at the black ship, perched like a Hawk-bat over the archipelago.

  
It would get them out of here much faster than even their stolen cargo ship would have — faster even than the U-wing they’d lost on Eadu.

  
A prickle of something raised the hair on the back of his neck and, on instinct, he dropped into the cover of some brush a breath before a pair of Stormtroopers appeared and then charged off down the direction he’d come from.

  
He lay there for a long moment, straining his ears for any indication that more Stormtroopers were coming and trying to stop his breathing from falling into panicked gasps.

  
Aside from the sound of those breaths, amplified by his straining ears, there was nothing but the distant sound of blasters, explosions, and the dogfighting ships tearing by overhead.

  
His eyes slid shut for a moment and he allowed himself the simple wish of someone else from Rogue One to be there with him.

  
He didn’t want to be alone, concussed, with his flitting memories in the middle of a war zone.  
What’s more, he’d noticed that it was easier for him to focus on the present when they were there to ground him. They were all from after he’d been taken by Saw Gerrera, after Bor Gullet. It made them solid in his mind, not like the scraps of his past that were scattered around his mind like confetti in the wind.

  
_You’re not alone._

  
Bodhi’s breathing hitched and his eyes snapped open.

  
Dark eyes darted around frantically, searching for the source of the voice. Half expecting and half hoping to see the blind Guardian perched nearby, his armored shadow half a step behind.

  
There was nobody.

  
“I’ve finally snapped.” He murmured to himself, before an explosion not far away made him flinch.

  
_You haven’t._ The voice assured him, and he flinched again.

  
Being reassured by a disembodied voice was not something that made him confident in his grip on reality.

  
A sense of amusement and affection hit him and gave him pause, then another explosion went off.

  
_You have no time to hesitate, little brother._ It was a second, equally familiar, voice and Bodhi felt his stomach twist in horrified understanding even as his mind rejected the thought.

  
They couldn’t be. No, not…Baze and Chirrut couldn’t be--

  
_We are one with the Force now,_ Chirrut’s voice whispered, _but the Captain and our star are not._

  
Bodhi swallowed thickly, remembering jagged pieces of childhood lessons whispered to him by his anxious mother desperate for her son to know of the heritage of their home.

  
He couldn’t quite remember her face, but he remembered her voice, thick with fear, as the Empire came to Jedha.

  
“Always trust in the Force, my son. All things are possible with it.” She whispered to him, tucking him close under her chin, turning his face away from their tiny window as Imperial forces moved through the streets like an infection, quickly disposing of any resistance they met along the way.

  
So Bodhi had always quietly believed in the Force, even if he never spoke it aloud.

  
_Get up, little brother. You must get yourselves off of this planet._ Baze told him, no less gruff than he had been in life.

  
“Okay.” He told them and glanced around, before dragging himself to his feet and scrambling towards an access ladder on the side of the Citadel’s base which should lead him up to the pad above.

  
He hoped that his pilot uniform, tattered and stained as it was, would at least make the Imperial forces pause before shooting and give him half a chance to try and explain what he was doing there. Already pieces of ideas fell into place. He’d been told to start up the ships, to move them away from the fighting. He was just trying to get away from the fighting, out of sight of the rebels.

  
Bodhi was terrible at impovising, but excelled at lying. So long as he had an idea to work from before the questions began he would be fine.

  
He had to be fine.

  
Cassian and Jyn needed him to get off this planet.

  
He had no idea how long it had been since he’d managed to speak with the Rebel fleet above them, time had been inconsistent since they’d landed. It had sped up and slowed down seemingly at random as his mind sputtered from shattered past to a fractured sense of present.

  
_Go, now!_ The Guardians whispered to him as he peered over the edge of the pad towards the Delta-class ship.

  
Bodhi hoisted himself over the edge and ignored the pain the movement brought him and staggered towards the open hatch of the ship.

  
There was no guard at the base and no pilot puttering around anxiously waiting for instructions as a war raged around them.

  
_The guards died with us._ Baze told him with satisfaction.

  
_And the pilots were trapped within the Citadel when the lock-down began._ Chirrut continued.

  
“Any time you want to stop being eerie and reading my thoughts…” He whispered to them as he half collapsed into the pilot’s chair and began a halting startup of the ship. He learned the control locations as his hands and mind jumped from here to there, skipping over several less essential parts of his pre-flight routine.

  
This was all about survival.

  
He could feel something ominous in the air, like a predator creeping towards him, and his only defense was to take flight.

  
He knew it wouldn’t be one of his best flights ever. Solo flights were possible with all Imperial craft, but it meant things were a lot choppier as a single person scrambled to hit all the right controls.

  
Possible was all he needed.

  
The ship responded readily to his ministrations and soon he was lifting off the pad and praying every prayer he’d ever heard his parents utter that he wouldn’t be shot down before he even found Cassian and Jyn.

  
_Trust in the Force._ Chirrut told him and Bodhi tried. Belief was one thing, but trust…that was much harder.

  
He kept the Delta ship low and circled around the Citadel, searching for any sign of where to go, listening for any hint the Guardians may give him and ignoring the jumbled mess of memories clamoring for his attention at the back of his mind. He didn’t have time for that.

  
A pale shape in the sky drew his gaze and his stomach dropped.

  
It was there. The weapon Galen and he had worked so hard to try and warn the Rebellion of, the weapon they were trying to stop.

  
The Death Star rotated in the sky, a silent artificial moon readying to reign destruction down on them.

  
_There._ The whisper jolted him from his horror and he turned back towards the Citadel, searching.

  
Movement caught his eye and he watched a turbo lift descend and felt a surge of hope.

  
Bodhi swooped around moving to land near the cargo bay exit.

  
The landing was jarring, but good enough for his purposes.

  
He threw the few switches that would be needed to keep the ship there and ready to move and threw himself from the pilot’s seat, staggering back towards the bay door and slamming a fist on the control.

  
The ramp descended just as the turbo lift doors opened and two forms staggered out, leaning so heavily on each other they moved like one creature.

  
Bodhi staggered to the end of the ramp, “Hurry! We need to go!”

  
Cassian and Jyn’s attention snapped to him and they seemed to gain a second wind. They turned and Bodhi saw that they hadn’t escaped the Citadel unharmed. There was a blaster wound on Cassian’s side and both of them moved with corresponding limps that somehow canceled each other out.

  
At the foot of the ramp Cassian staggered, nearly falling and Bodhi dove to help Jyn keep him upright.

  
His shoulders and arms screamed from the effort, but between the two of them, they got the Captain into the bay, Bodhi slapping the ramp control as they passed.

  
“Sit down and get strapped in.” Bodhi told them, guiding them to one side of the ship where seats lined the wall before ducking out from beneath Cassian’s arm and lunging for the cockpit once more.

  
From there it only took a few seconds to get them off the ground again and make a break for the atmosphere. Their route was wide open and clear, the shattered remains of the shield gate and two star destroyers still tumbling towards the planet’s surface in the distance.

  
Just behind and below them, the Death Star opened fire on Scarif.

  
Something rattled through them all and Bodhi wasn’t sure if it was just a physical shock wave from the weapon. It  _felt_ like something more than just that, lancing through his heart.

  
They needed to get further away, he realized as they fled the destruction wave.

  
His hands moved on their own and for once his mind didn’t second-guess the action.

  
He entered destination coordinates long since memorized into the hyperdrive nav computer and shot them into hyperspace and towards his ruined home.

  
They needed to escape the Death Star and it’s flock of destroyers now, figuring out where to go from there could wait until they had a chance to take a breath.

  
Jedha should give them a chance to regroup without the Empire breathing down their necks.

  
He hoped.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that took a little longer than I'd hoped, but between my day job, working on another project and watching my world get scarier and darker by the day... Also, editing.
> 
> Thank you so much for the kudos and comments y'all already put on this story, it's been years since I last posted anything anywhere and I'd forgotten how good that feels.
> 
> Also, I did a bit of editing on chapter 1 (mainly changed the song lyrics at the top to something more fitting) so...yeah...


	3. Daughter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When the ship rattles off the beach, Cassian’s hand finds hers.
> 
> Jyn shuts her eyes and focuses everything she could on the feeling of his hand warm in hers. They were alive. Bodhi was alive. He’d stolen a ship and come back for both of them…
> 
> Her heart was thudding in her ears.

_I’m a phoenix in the water_   
_A fish that’s learned to fly_   
_And I’ve always been a daughter_   
_But feathers are meant for the sky,_   
_And so I’m wishing, wishing further,_   
_For the excitement to arrive_   
_It’s just I’d rather be causing the chaos_   
_Than laying at the sharp end of this knife._

_With every small disaster_   
_I’ll let the waters still_   
_Take me away to some place real._

_‘Cause they say home is where your heart is set in stone_   
_Is where you go when you’re alone_   
_Is where you go to rest your bones_   
_It’s not just where you lay your head_   
_It’s not just where you make your bed_   
_As long as we’re together, does it matter where we go?_   
_Home_

_-’Home’ by Gabrielle Aplin_

 

* * *

 

  
Jyn had been ready to die.

  
She didn’t _want_ to, not when Cassian was right there and there was so much her heart ached to tell him, but she would have been satisfied if that was how her life ended. Beside someone who cared. Beside someone who _came back_ for her.

  
It would have been a far cry from the death she’d been expecting not even a week before.

  
When they’d stumbled out of the elevator toon the beach they’d both stared up at the Death Star, at her father’s terrible creation, and had silently agreed to keep moving down to the beach.

  
Then Bodhi’s voice had broken through the daze and both of them had frozen.

  
The pilot was decidedly more singed and soot streaked than he had been before. His eyes blown wide with adrenaline and frantic as he waved to them from the ramp of an angular ship that she _knew_.

  
It was the dark ship that cut its way into her nightmares and ushering in the man in white, her mother’s death, before snatching away her father and her childhood within the span of one hour. She hated that ship and what it had brought into and taken from her life.

  
But it was an escape, a miracle they weren’t expecting, and they moved as fast as they could towards it.

  
Cassian’s bad leg kept bucking and Jyn’s own injured leg wasn’t faring well either, but she grit her teeth and ignored the pain and exhaustion. Hope made her single-minded as she half-dragged them towards the gaping maw of the dark ship.

  
Her foot hit the ramp and she stumbled, nearly toppling both of them, but Bodhi was suddenly there, tugging Cassian upright and giving her a chance to steady herself.

  
The three of them made it up the ramp, slapping the ramp closed behind them, and into the troop transport bay where Bodhi helped Cassian drop into a seat before hauling himself up the ladder and into the cockpit.

  
“Strap yourselves in!” He shouted down as he vanished from sight, voice as loud and unwavering as Jyn had ever heard it.

  
The two of them scramble to do so, leaning heavily on each other in their seats.

  
When the ship rattles off the beach, Cassian’s hand finds hers.

  
Jyn shuts her eyes and focuses everything she could on the feeling of his hand warm in hers. They were alive. Bodhi was alive. He’d stolen a ship and come back for both of them…

  
Her heart was thudding in her ears.

  
“Jyn.”

  
She blinks her eyes open and meets Cassian’s gaze. His eyes are softer than she’d ever seen them.

  
He’s staring at her like he had in the elevator, but there was a spark of something new in his eyes as he searches her face for something.

  
Her heart throbs and her throat tightens and she knows what will happen next.

  
The bunker she’d made in her mind to keep all her memories and emotions at bay had been destroyed during their mission and she was left standing exposed under a starry sky. Without the walls to bury things behind, places to hide things she didn’t want to or have time to deal with, she knew if she stepped over that tipping point she’d be lost to her emotions.

  
She gives him a look, tilting her head slightly in warning.

  
His mouth quirks into a smile, apparently understanding, and he murmurs, “Your father would have been proud.”

  
Jyn doesn’t know what to do with all the emotions churning in her. Her heart ached, her stomach twisted and fluttered.

  
She hopes that would be true. That if he’d had time to get to know the person his daughter had become his eyes would have crinkled with joy and he would have hugged her tightly.

  
_‘Oh, Stardust. You have no idea how proud I am. How proud we both are.’_

  
She clenched Cassian’s hand tighter.

  
Then there was the familiar whine of the hyperdrive enabling and they were jolted out of real space and away from Scarif.

  
Once the familiar vibrations of hyperspace replaced the shudders of the flight out of the war zone, Jyn finally sagged.

  
They’d made it. They’d gotten to the plans and sent them to the Alliance They’d won, and then they escaped when they hadn’t expected to.

  
Cassian’s hand squeezed hers before he too relaxed, albeit a bit more tentatively.

  
Memories of the desperate climb up the data tower floated to the surface and she peered over at him.

  
“Are you alright?”

  
His lips twisted wryly in reply and his free hand wrapped around his chest, “I’ve been better, but considering I didn’t expect to get off that beach until a few minutes ago…”

  
She answered his grin with one of her own, stretching her throbbing leg out before her. “I know what you mean.”

  
Cassian’s gaze finally broke away and peered towards the ladder up to the cockpit their pilot had disappeared into minutes earlier.

  
“Bodhi, are you alright?” He called out, voice pitched to carry.

  
There was a pause before the reply came.

  
“Y-yeah. Setting the autopilot for now.” He still sounded a bit rushed and frantic, but nowhere near as terrified as he’d been when they’d staggered on board.

  
Jyn exchanged a look with Cassian and then she squeezed his hand once more and unfastened her harness, moving to stand. “I’m going to find the med kit.”

  
It wasn’t the first time she’d scavenged through an Imperial ship for medical supplies — they were all depressingly uniform when it came to where things were located and how things were labeled. Regulations, she was sure, and the invariability of the ships’ interiors had always grated on her.

  
It was a thin veneer of order and uniformity that hid the cold calculation and systematic destruction that always followed in the Empire’s wake.

  
On the plus side, it always meant scavenging from ships and bases was relatively easy because once you learned where everything was placed on one ship or on one base, the rest fell into place easily.

  
When she returned from the storage cabinet just outside of the main troop cabin, in what she assumed was an engineering station given the controls available, Bodhi was slowly descending the ladder.

  
He offered both of them small smiles before dropping his eyes away from them and sitting heavily in the troop seat opposite Cassian.

  
Jyn returned his smile, surprising herself with how easily it came.

  
It hit her then, standing in the doorway of a stolen imperial ship — the second one they’d stolen in as many days — that she’d broken one of her major rules. The rules she’d been taught by her mother and then driven home by the pain of her death. She’d let the two of them too close and doubted she’d ever really be able to disentangle herself from them after this point.

  
She also realized that she didn’t want to, and that sent a spike of fear through her.

  
Jyn felt along the tethers tying her to them — something she hadn’t done in years — and noted two others which had been cut short.

  
They felt like jagged wounds on her soul.

  
She knew what that meant, knew what that pain meant.

  
“Did you see anyone else?” Cassian asked, “Any other ships escaping off planet?”

  
Jyn hoped that someone else had made it off Scarif. She didn’t want them to be the only ones, but she knew that the two others she’d been most hoping to see again wouldn’t be waiting for them back at base.

_‘Oh, Little Sister…’_

  
_‘We are one with the Force…’_

  
“I don’t know.” Bodhi shook his head, then his eyes dimmed and his head dropped, “Baze and Chirrut…they told me to take a ship and find you.”

  
Silence fell and Jyn felt at the jagged wounds the Guardian’s had left behind in her mind. She knew they would scar — just as the one from her mother had, just like the ones from Saw and her father were already trying to.

  
She turned away from the marks the dead had left on her and focused back on the living.

  
“Did we make it away clean?” Cassian asked finally.

  
“I’m not sure.” Bodhi admitted, licking his lips. “I didn’t have time to check for tracking devices and quiet beacons in the ship before I stole it.”

  
The note of pride he ended on made the corner of her mouth quirk up and her eyes dart to Cassian who wore a similar expression.

  
“I set a course to buy some time to search for them, but we needed to get off planet fast. The Death Star was readying to fire.” Bodhi finished.

  
“Where’d you set it to?” Cassian asked.

  
The pilot’s eyes flicked up to him then down again. “Jedha.”

  
Jyn’s good humor died, her eyes went dark with memories of the wave of destruction that had chased them off of the planet, and of Saw’s death.

  
Resentment and anger may have festered in her for years after he’d abandoned her and the tether she’d had with him had deminished until it was little more than a thin chain, but it had never shattered until he’d died.

  
Deep below the rage and hate at what he’d done to her, was the affection she’d had for the man who’d pulled her out of the bunker on Lah’mu. He’d taken her under his wing when she’d been an scared and angry child who woke nightly with visions of her mother’s death and her father’s quiet submission to her murderers. Saw never tried to replace her father, never claimed to be anything more than he was, knew he wasn’t perfect and ensured Jyn knew that he was fallible, but he’d been her foster father, and for all his faults, she’d loved him.  
Which had been why his betrayal had hurt so much and had such a lasting effect on her ability to truly trust others to keep their word.

  
His final meeting with her in the half ruined temple on Jedha had been like reopening scars even before he’d shown Jyn her father’s message and then the whole thing had become a hurricane in her mind’s eye. All the careful walls she’d built around herself to keep others out, to keep the threat of that knife-sharp pain that came with people leaving her once more at a distance came crashing down around her.

  
And the tethers that connected her with both her real and foster fathers had swelled, growing strong once more and supporting her when she should have crumbled alongside the walls of her bunker.

  
Even now her mind remained a ruin of what it had been for years.

  
The bunker she’d hidden within herself had been replaced with vast fields of rubble and uncertainty.

  
She didn’t know what she was going to do now. She had never been one for planning out her future, and even before she’d been broken out of the prison transport, she hadn’t been expecting to live much longer.

  
The prospect of returning to Jedha — of going back to where the first shattering blow to her defenses had come from — made her stomach roil in dread.

  
“Can this ship make that run?” Cassian’s voice drew her back to the present and she set the med pack down and hid the tremors in her hand by opening it up to see what was inside.

  
She wasn’t alone. She clung to that thought.

  
Who she’d been may have been completely destroyed by the last few days — her entire life crashing down around her— but Cassian and Bodhi were still there and she could feel their bonds thrumming steadily in the back of her mind now that she knew they were there. They would hold her up and keep her steady.

  
She exhaled quietly and began pulling out packs of bacta and burn salve and bandages.

  
“The fuel reserves on this thing are well beyond any cargo vessel I’ve ever seen and the nav computer didn’t predict any problems.” Bodhi admitted. “I wasn’t expecting us to actually have to make the full trip, I just…needed to buy some time.”

  
Cassian quirked a smile at the pilot and straightened.

  
“It’s a good plan.”

  
Then his breath hitched a bit and he hissed out what was unmistakably a curse and cradled his side.

  
Jyn’s heart leapt up to her throat, and she crossed the narrow aisle, hands hovering over him. “Cassian?”

  
He peered up at her and attempted a comforting smile which looked more like a grimace. “I’m alright. Just…tugged at something wrong.”

  
“By breathing.” She pointed out dryly, unimpressed by his attempt but relieved all the same. “Considering how many things you hit when you fell, I think I’d be more shocked if you didn’t have a broken rib.”

  
“Just cracked.” The captain corrected, that amused smirk ghosting it’s way onto his face as he peered up at her.

  
She narrowed her eyes at him, heart fluttering oddly, “Do I want to know how you’re so sure of the difference?”

  
His grin returned in full. Jyn knew she was in trouble.

  
“It’s a surprisingly boring story, so I’ll save it for another time.” He replied and then shifted himself slightly and relaxed, apparently finding a way to not aggravate his broken — excuse her — _cracked_ ribs.

  
“Just don’t do anything stupid until we get back to base — or anywhere with a trained medic. This kit may be good, but aside from stitches and basic field care, I’m shit at patching people up.” She warned him with a huff, flicking her eyes away from his face and then back.

  
“I’ll do my best.” Cassian promised, the corners of his eyes crinkling.

  
“Good.” Jyn whirled away, ignoring the way their bond sang, and rooted through the med kit once more. “I don’t see a bone-knitter in here, so unless there’s a second kit hidden somewhere else, there’s nothing I can do about the rib. There’s plenty of bacta patches for the blaster burn though,” she told him and passed him one of the sealed packs.

  
“There was a second med kit behind the flight controls. There could be one in there.” Bodhi offered and started to push himself up.

  
“Don’t even think about it.” Jyn snapped at him, surprising both of them.

  
Bodhi stared at her with wide eyes and Jyn’s eyes darted away from him, trying to hide the emotions she knew they held. Worry and confusion.

  
She stared hard at the blistered skin creeping up the side of his neck and down his left arm, ignoring his gaze and knowing that Cassian was watching her too. She scrambled for a reason to explain away the outburst without touching on the truth.

  
“I can get that, you need to get something on those burns before they turn bad.”

  
She fixed her expression and met his staring eyes, comfortable with the reasoning. It wasn’t a lie — she’d seen enough burns to know that time was important to ensure they didn’t get infected — it just wasn’t the primary reason she’d snapped at him.

  
She knew better than to try and explain and had promised her mother years before when Lyra had discovered what her daughter could do.

  
Jyn had been so scared she’d done something wrong when she told her mother that she could always find them because of the glowing rope that connected them.

  
“No, darling, it’s fine. It’s perfectly fine. But those ropes must remain a secret and you must be careful of who you allow yourself to be tied to.” She’d said, eyes proud and sad at once. “Promise me.”

  
“I promise, mama.” She’d said and then canted her head to the side, “How will I know who is okay?”

  
“Trust in the Force.”

  
It wasn’t until her mother was dead and Jyn was a teenager that she realized why her mother had been so adamant it be a secret.

  
There were stories of Jedi whispered amongst people on every planet Saw brought the Partisans and Jyn to. Even amongst the rebels themselves. People spoke of what the Force could do: Move things and whisper information and persuade people.

  
And bind them together.

  
Jyn had seen Force-sensitives be purged by the Empire, and so kept silent and buried the constantly searching tendrils locked tight within her bunker and kept others at a distance with harsh words and violent tendencies.

  
Until now.

  
Bodhi blinked, then followed her gaze and swallowed, sinking back into his seat. “I didn’t realize…”

  
“Bad enough burns kill the nerves so you don’t realize.” Jyn told him, surprised at how gentle her voice sounded. She was way, way too late to be free of these bonds.

  
She passed him the burn salve from the kit and moved to the ladder intent on escaping before she gave anything else away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long! Life has been kicking my ass and I have the bruises to prove it!
> 
> Jyn is both very easy for me to wrap my head around and at the same time very tricky to write. Hopefully I'm not butchering her too much.
> 
> The song used at the beginning is also one that I heard and instantly thought of her. 
> 
> I also don't know where "Jyn is Force-sensitive" came from. It literally just *poof* appeared in my head and I went with it.
> 
> Thank you so much for all the Kudos and comments, it really does mean the world to me! 
> 
> Expect updates to continue to be a bit sporadic and possibly slower -- work is about to get even more crazy with a coworker out on maternity and others getting ready to skip town on their annual migration to warmer climates.


End file.
